‘Uxbridge has cornered the market in liminal architecture’

–        Iain Sinclair, London Orbital (2002)

7th Literary London conference /

Liminal London:

Country/City, Work/Leisure, Past/Future, and States Between.

Department of English, School of Arts, Uxbridge Campus,

 Brunel University, London

2^nd – 4^th July 2008.

 Keynote speakers:

 Professor Robert Bruegmann, Professor of Art History, Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Illinois at Chicago, author of Sprawl: A Compact History (University of Chicago Press, 2005)

 Professor Kristin Bluemel, Monmouth University, author of George Orwell and the Radical Eccentrics: Intermodernism in Literary London (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004)

 Professor Alan Robinson, University of St Gallen, author of Imagining London, 1770-1900 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004)

 Participant creative writers T.B.A.

  ‘When you get to Beckenham, which is the last parish in Kent, the country begins to assume a cockney-like appearance; all is artificial, and you no longer feel any interest in it’

–        William Cobbett, Rural Rides (1830)

‘… what London attracts with the mirage of its work shining across the counties and the countries, London holds with the glamour of its leisure’

–        Ford Madox Ford, The Soul of London (1905)

‘The motorway towns were built on the frontier between a tired past and a future without illusions and snobberies’

–        J.G. Ballard, Kingdom Come (2006)

 The majority of Greater London consists of areas like Uxbridge; places which once had an independent existence but have been relentlessly consumed by the outward sprawl of the city. As we can see from Cobbett’s observations, even in the first half of the nineteenth century there was no longer a simple boundary between City and Country but something of a twilight zone in which nothing was real. While Cobbett bemoaned the collapse of traditional rural paternalism into the enforced pauperism of wage labour, the zone enabled new forms of living. For Ford, it was precisely the persistence of an almost parodic version of the ‘Country’ in the outer zones which allowed the masses to partake in the cultured leisure pursuits of the gentry as London and Country seasons merged into one daily commute. Thus was the trace of true individualism preserved within modern mass society and, thereby, the possibility of a fulfilling utopian future was kept tantalisingly open. But the transition was never completed: Ford talked of romantic suburbanites doomed to ‘an always tragic death’ and while, less than forty years later, George Orwell thought that he had found ‘the germs of future England’ along the arterial roads ‘in Slough, Barnet, Dagenham, Letchworth, Hayes’, this England has not so much appeared as become part of the landscape of the past. Sinclair talks of West Drayton in this manner as an historical frontier in which ‘Bicycle shops are a nostalgic recollection of the days when H.G. Well’s clerks took to the country roads.’ In Ballard’s Kingdom Come, the implicit utopian nostalgia of the Cross of St George has become the nostalgia for an English fascism that never was and the outer London zone simmers with the threat of millennial meltdown as all the part-digested historical essences ever consumed by the sprawl threaten to spew forth. There may never be a better time to identify the constituent elements of London’s outer zones. This conference welcomes any such attempts as it seeks to map the very liminality of London.

Please note that the headline theme of the event does not exclude other proposals concerning any other aspect relevant to Literary London themes and contexts, which are most welcome, as are complete panels (subject to final approval by the conference organizers). Additionally, while the main focus of the conference will be on literary and cultural representations of London, the organizers actively encourage interdisciplinary contributions relating to film, architecture, geography, theories of urban space, etc.. Papers from postgraduate students are welcome for consideration.

 Literary London 2008 aims to:

• Read literary and cultural texts in their historical and social context and in relation to theoretical approaches to the study of the metropolis;
• Explore the relationship of margins, the central and spaces between;
• Investigate the changing cultural and historical geography of London;
• Situate Londoners, the city’s visitors and their  various psychogeographic spaces;
• Consider the social, political, and spiritual fears, hopes, and perceptions that have inspired representations of London;
• Trace different traditions of representing London and examine how the pluralism of London society is reflected in London literature and its cultural narratives; and,
• Celebrate the contribution London and Londoners have made to English and World literature

  This should be an occasion for productive dialogue between scholars of literary and material culture. Papers on any of literary, theoretical, narrative and material aspects of London and its representation are anticipated. Proposals for comprised panels of three (or four) speakers are also welcome.

Proposals of approximately 300 word are invited for 20-minute papers which consider any period or genre of English literature about, set in, inspired by, or alluding to central and suburban London and its environs, from the city's roots in Roman times to the present day. Add a brief description (where relevant indicating institutional affiliation and publications in particular) of the proposer. Submissions by email only, to be sent to variously:

Lawrence Phillips: contact@literarylondon.org

Nick Hubble; Nick.Hubble@brunel.ac.uk

Philip Tew; Philip.tew@brunel.ac.uk

Note that your subject line must include the phrase ‘LITERARY LONDON BRUNEL 2008’ since your message will be initially retrieved and sorted automatically. If you do not do so it may well be lost in this process.

Deadline for submissions: Monday 28^th April 2008.  

Notification of early acceptance can be provided for those requiring institutional funding, particularly in the case of international scholars. The conference fee will be posted in due course once the costing has been finalized. There will be discounted rates for postgraduate students, the retired and additional general discounts for those paying in advance (to be announced).

Literary London Web site: www.literarylondon.org 

The Annual Literary London conference is mutually supportive of the e-journal of the same name. Literary London is affiliated to the UK Network for Modern Fiction Studies.

UNIVERSITY OF WESTMINSTER, SATURDAY 5th JULY 2008

NICK CAVE CONFERENCE

The University of Westminster will host a one-day international conference on the work of acclaimed Australian singer-songwriter Nick Cave in July 2008. Cave is one of the most critically admired songwriters and performers of our time; his extensive body of work, produced over thirty years, ranges from the cacophonous intensity of The Birthday Party to the hushed reverence of The Good Son, and from the savagery of Murder Ballads to the melancholia of The Boatman’s Call. His latest album with his long-term musical collaborators, The Bad Seeds, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, will be released in March 2008. He has also worked very successfully in other genres, including fiction, scriptwriting, and acting. Speakers at the conference include:

Charlie Blake ( Liverpool Hope University): ‘Cruel Wisdom: Nick Cave, Archaic Violence, and the Perversity of Song’.

Isabella van Elferen ( Utrecht University): ‘Mediating the Uncanny: Nick Cave’s Gothic Modalities’.

Nick Groom ( University of Exeter): ‘’Executioner-Style’’: Nick Cave and the Murder Ballad Tradition’.

Rebecca Johinke ( University of Sydney): ‘’Welcome to Hell’: the Rhetorics of Masculine Violence in Ghosts of the Civil Dead’.

Paul Lumsden (Grant MacEwan College, Edmonton): ‘’The College Professor Says it’: Using Nick Cave’s Lyrics in the College Classroom’.

Emma McEvoy ( University of Westminster) and Catherine Spooner ( Lancaster University): ‘’Now They’ve Changed Their Tune’: Nick Cave’s Appropriations of American Folk Traditions’.

Nathan Wiseman-Trowse ( University of Northampton): ‘Oedipus Wrecks: Cave and the Presley Myth’.

Attendance at the conference is free, but places are strictly limited. To reserve a place, please e-mail the conference organiser, Dr John Baker, on bakerj@westminster.ac.uk.

Dr John H. Baker

Department of English & Linguistics

University of Westminster

Tel: 0207-911-5000, x. 2367

CFP / Satire Today: Transhistorical,

 Transcultural Dialogues

 UK Network for Modern Fiction Conference

Marymount Manhattan College

New York City, June 12-13, 2008

 Since the late twentieth century, there has been a resurgence of scholarly interest in the theory and practice of satire. A number of theoreticians have endeavored to re-conceptualize the very idea of the satirical, while artists working in various genres and media have continued to revitalize and reinvent the mode for a contemporary context. What new insights into the concept of satire can be proposed for the twenty-first century?

 The UK Network for Modern Fiction Conference is pleased to be working in conjunction with Marymount Manhattan College, the hosts, to offers its first north American event. The organizers invite papers (or agreed panels) focusing on various areas including contemporary satirical texts that reshape traditional conventions, as well as contemporary critical approaches to earlier satirical writing (from the eighteenth century to the present). The conference’s primary focus is on literary satire, but interdisciplinary approaches and analyses of other media are most welcome.

Questions for consideration might include but are not limited to:

 What are the conceptual boundaries of satire?

How have new forms of satire stretched or questioned those boundaries?  

What is the relationship between satire and innovations in the field of narrative structure?

How have contemporary satirists reworked and appropriated traditional conventions?

How has the breakdown of distinctions between popular and high culture influenced satirical production today?

How does satire aid our investigation of political discourses?

Does satirical production perpetuate the postmodernist dynamics of subversion and complacency?

What are the traditional and current functions of satire’s self-reflectivity?

What is satire’s relationship to questions of national/transnational identity?

Is satire concerned with problems of civic responsibility?

In what ways does satire interrogate institutions and power structures (political, academic, and economic)?

What are the intersections of satire with ethical and religious discourses?

What insights can be gained from examining the circulation and marketing of satire?

What new areas of satirical practice are emerging today?

What are satire’s goals in the contemporary world?

Please submit 300-word proposals for 15-20 minute papers OR for pre-organized panels on appropriate topics (subject to review by and agreement of the organizers) stating name and affiliation to Magdalena Maczynska (mmaczynska@mmm.edu) by December 15, 2007. Successful applicants will be notified by January 15, 2008. Conference fee t.b.a.